Tina Demirdjian's first
book, IMPRINT, is published thanks to a grant from the City of
Glendale’s Arts and Culture Commission and additional funding
from the Durfee Foundation. A selection of Demirdjian’s poems
have appeared in Aspora, Ararat International Journal, the Los Angeles
Times, High Performance, Midwest Poetry Review, the Texas
Observer, and in Birthmark: a bi-lingual anthology of Armenian-American poetry published in 1999. She is the recipient of three honorable mentions from the Arroyo Arts Collective’s
Poetry in the Windows contests.

Ms. Demirdjian has taught poetry in schools, libraries and community
centers throughout Los Angeles since 1991. Teaching, for Ms.
Demirdjian, is the vehicle that allows her the opportunity to best
serve the community in which she lives.

IN THE KITCHENIt was always a fiasco
to put away the dishes
to stack the amber glasses
one on top of the other
toss the miss-matched
silverware in the drawer
stolen from the airlines
or the Fountainbleau Hotel
during my parent’s honeymoon.

We always like to steal
a little memory
dad said with a smile
and so we had a collection
of stolen things
in my childhood
the memory of them
coming back to me
at the oddest moments
sticking to me like the humid nights
in New Jersey

the way you stuck to me
that day in the kitchen
the third time we kissed
when your hands
went beneath
my peach sweater
to touch my breasts
I think I’m falling
in love with you, you said
and I kept silent in the kitchen

thinking I heard
the jerking of those amber glasses
being stacked on top of one another
and the clanging of silverware
tossed inside the drawer

like I tossed my peach sweater
in the closet
after we kissed:
you stole a little of me
that afternoon
and inside my sweater
I stole a bit of your smell.

IN BARREN LANDSThey’re
planting
trees
in dusty fields
where their mothers
and fathers
once soiled their feet

two women
wear
flowered
scarves
on their heads

bend
and
dig
with their hands:

fleshy shovels
holding the earth,
tilling the soil,

digging passages
like human veins:
calling their ancestors
beneath
the
ground
to send us prayers,
to chant
the ancient songs.

THE LITTLE RED DOG

I
When you forget
that the red dog in your hands
was playing with you yesterday
it doesn’t bother you
sitting on your lap
it’s feet folded in your hands
looking at you with small black eyes
you don’t remember doing this before

II
it’s as if you never remembered rain
something that happened throughout your life
when you wore your galoshes
sifting through streets in New York

III
so many years
in the cream-colored house
so many people walking past
the two red maple trees

IV
memories seeped
into the pink-flowered wallpaper
in your bedroom
the touch of his hands
only a memory of the wind now
and his kisses
maybe the saliva from your lips
dripping

V
just like my little baby girl
who doesn’t even remember
when I give her the same red dog
again and again
she smiles at me bursting with laughter
and I burst back into her
a kiss kiss kiss on the cheek
and then again

VI
I could play this game forever
but for you whose memory has trailed back
as if the world lived in reverse
and rain could go back up to the sky
memory lost in you is different
than new memory gained by a child

VII
we live in between those two worlds
watching the world lose
watching the world gain life
in ourselves.